Undergraduate Student Project Summer 2007 at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) on the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus in Hinxton, Cambridgeshire. FIND Functional INtegration of Data - the synapse and the brain: the application of computational biology to understand more about the proteins involved in synapse function in the brain. The FIND project will seek to unravel the functions and interactions of the many proteins involved in synapse function. We will use state-of-the-art bioinformatics tools to analyse all the available sequence, structure, expression and pathway data related to transmission of signals across the synapse. Over the summer of 2007, a team of undergraduate students, supervised by scientists of research groups at the EMBL-EBI, will gather and integrate as much knowledge as possible about the components of the glutamate NMDA receptor complex as well as their interactions. This protein hyperstructure, composed of more than a hundred different proteins, is the main molecular device responsible of learning and memory. The students will use the whole spectrum of computational biology tools and techniques in order to understand its function, including comparative genomics, molecular phylogeny, structural biology, functional genomics and systems biology. Reference: Collins et al. Molecular characterization and comparison of the components and multiprotein complexes in the postsynaptic proteome. J Neurochem. 2006;97 Suppl 1:16-23. The project will start on June 11th 2007 and run through the summer months. Students interested to participate should send a cover-letter and a CV to Nicolas Le Novere (lenov at ebi.ac.uk) or myself. The European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) is a research driven academic organisation that forms part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). The Institute is one of the key providers of databases of biological data including nucleic acid and protein sequences, chemical structures and pathways. EBI's research groups solve biological problems through the computational analysis of biological data and the EBI covers the full Areas of research include: genomic analysis of developmental pathways (Paul Bertone); Evolutionary analysis of sequence data (Nick Goldman); computational systems biology of neuronal signaling (Nicolas Le Nov --------------------------------------------- Best wishes Wolfgang